New rail cars to deliver potash from K+S Legacy mine to port in B.C.

New rail cars to deliver potash from K+S Legacy mine to port in B.C.

Saskatchewan’s newest potash miner has started taking delivery of the more than 500 specialized rail cars that will carry the potassium-laced salts from its Legacy solution mine to port facilities in Port Moody, B.C.

“The work we are doing to prepare to move our product to market is an important aspect of the Legacy Project,” K+S Potash Canada President and CEO Ulrich Lamp said in a statement.

Manufactured by National Steel Car Ltd. in Hamilton, Ont., which has been working on the project since 2012, the rail cars are slightly shorter than standard cars but have the same capacity, the company said in a news release.

A typical train from the mine to Port Moody will consist of 177 cars, reaching a total length of about three kilometres. The potash will then be loaded into a warehouse or onto a cargo ship and moved to customers in developing regions, the news release stated.

K+S Potash Canada, a subsidiary of the German resources firm K+S AG, has said a major industrial accident in July means the mine near Bethune will enter production in mid-2017, about six months later than originally anticipated.

The company, which is headquartered in Saskatoon, began commissioning the massive project last month. It said at the time that it expects the mine to reach two million tonnes of annual production by the end of 2017, as previously forecast.